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More bad news from the college this week. Last-straw kind of bad news. We're in the midst of finals and I have so. many. papers. to grade so I'm pausing before making any grand, stress-driven decisions that can be read as emotional or knee-jerk. But I have a good idea of how I'm going to proceed.
I came across this article by physicist Alan Lightman on the TED web site about quiet time/mindfulness. Here's a small sampling: Somehow, we need to create a new habit of mind, as individuals and as a society.
We need a mental attitude that values and protects stillness, privacy,
solitude, slowness, personal reflection; that honors the inner self;
that allows each of us to wander about without schedule within our own
minds.
I have paid lip service to these values that Lightman writes about for years -- since becoming a mother just over thirteen years ago. They became values because I no longer had an easy way to incorporate them into my life. Infants and toddlers do that …

ERMAHGERD, you guys. I am so so so excited about M.S.'s latest art for our sketchbook project. (Which, by the way, we're still working on, even though the deadline passed.) I wrote a poem (which is, in itself, kind of exciting . . . to me and no one else . . . but whatever) and then M.S. took the book and made this gorgeous drawing in response this morning and LOOKIT ISN'T IT AWESOME?

It makes me so happy.

Welp, in other good news, after all of my griping and whinging and whining, the universe has thrown me a bone. I've been accepted into the Bread Loaf Sicily program for September 2018, which means that while I may not be doing a sabbatical or a true residency next semester, I will be granted five precious days at the end of the summer to concentrate on my writing.

In Sicily.
Thank you, Universe.

Obviously, it's been uplifting to receive good news. On the other hand, I am seriously veering into burnout.

Sarah Kain Gutowski is a Professor of English at Suffolk County Community College on Long Island, where she lives with her husband, three children, and large, goofy dog. She is the author of Fabulous Beast (forthcoming, Texas Review Press, 2019) and Fabulous Beast: The Sow (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013). Her poetry has been published in Painted Bride Quarterly, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Verse Daily, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Epiphany, The Threepenny Review, and So to Speak: A Feminist Journal.